Breaking Into Startups

Everette Taylor is not just any 27-year-old. Don’t be fooled by his age. To date, Everette built four companies including GrowthHackers.com, which he co-founded with Sean Ellis, Millisense Marketing Consulting, and GrowthPub. He is currently the Chief Marketing Officer at Skurt, a mobility startup delivering rental cars-on-demand. Additionally, he was recently announced as the National Brand Ambassador for the NASA Startup Initiative and has been honored as a Social Influencer of the Year by Black Enterprise. This Southside Richmond, Virginia-native, shares an extremely inspiring story of how he was able to achieve all of these accomplishments despite being homeless at young age. Now he travels the world speaking at various conferences while building and empowering his team at Skurt.

For Michael Jay Walker, his career was more likely driven by the motivation to do what people thought he couldn't do, fearlessly working his way up the marketing ladder until a decision to take a passionate leap into the tech space. Michael got his MBA at Ross School of Business and took on executive marketing roles for large corporations such as Ford Motor Company, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, EA, and Mattel. 25 years later, he went out to co-found a mobile app startup and served as a Chief Marketing Officer and Operations Officer at a few other tech companies. He then decided to learn how to code at Dev Bootcamp until he was later asked to join the team as a Chief Academic Officer and Campus Director in San Francisco.

Being a 3rd generation San Franciscan who grew up in public housing, Stevon has always been aware of the challenges of his community including the major lack of access to Computer Science education among kids in the Bay Area. His drive to take part in bridging this tech divide was what got him to join Mission Bit, where he now serves as the CEO. Stevon also ran and won the election to be the Commissioner on the Board of Education for the City of San Francisco. By leveraging relationships and tapping into the power of asking, Stevon is committed to providing computer science education for kids in the Bay Area so they can truly unlock their full potential.

It is his love of tech that got Carlos González de Villaumbrosia to immigrate from Spain to the United States. Being good at numbers and video games, led him to study computer science at one of the top universities in Spain where he spent five years learning how to code. Although he once dreamed of becoming a soccer player as a child, Carlos is a coach, not on the playing field, but rather in the educational space. He is a serial entrepreneur having started three companies including Product School that teaches product management to people who have the passion to do it.

One thing Kenyatta Leal knows is that while there’s no manual for surviving a life sentence, tapping into the power of visualization can definitely get you far (in fact, as far as getting out of prison and now working as a Manager of Campus Services at RocketSpace, a tech campus for startups.) Kenyatta believes that the greatest challenges present the greatest opportunities. A former resident at San Quentin State Prison, Kenyatta owned up for the bad choices he had made in the past and corrected his course. He eventually became the founding member of The Last Mile, a startup accelerator and entrepreneurial program, where they help incarcerated individuals develop tech skills in order to prepare them for successful re-entry.

Born in China and raised in the U.S., Yan Fan knows that her coding skills are a superpower she can apply in any industry or role. Yan started out working as a commodities trader on Wall Street. Several years later, she discovered her other passion - coding. After completing a coding bootcamp, Hack Reactor, Yan became a UI engineer at a big data startup called Ayasdi. This experience led her to join forces with ReBootKAMP, a nonprofit organization in the MIddle East focused on teaching Syrian refugees and women how to code.

A New Jersey-native, Charlie Harrington believes that you can’t find luck unless you take that courage to jump off the train and put yourself out there. From New York to London, Charlie transitioned from finance to business development at a startup. As if breaking into startups via the non-technical route wasn’t enough to quench his thirst for creativity, Charlie ultimately took a deep dive into software engineering by attending a coding bootcamp called Hack Reactor. Charlie currently works at LendUp as a software engineer but it was through a chance encounter that eventually got him the job.

Rodney Urquhart grew up in a North Philly neighborhood ridden with gang violence and effects of the crack epidemic. After seeing people around him get involved with gangs and crime, he realized that staying in high school would result in getting arrested or shot. At 16, Rodney dropped out of high school and moved in with his grand mother. Being a high school dropout and having no college degree, Rodney had his fair share of companies casting doubt on his ability. But his willingness to learn and work well with others was what got him to create an impressive company portfolio including Comcast, Microsoft’s Yammer, and ThoughtWorks. He didn’t just want to survive, he wanted to thrive. Rodney currently heads the test infrastructure team at Slack. He is also part of a program called /dev/color, a non-profit organization that aims to maximize the impact of Black software engineers in the tech space.

Jotaka Eaddy is a concrete example that you can come from political and social activism, take those exact same skills, and use them everyday to help build a business that creates change. Even back as a seventh grader living in a small town in South Carolina, Jotaka was adamant about her commitment to abolish death penalty (that she even wrote this down on her high school yearbook.) Jotaka grew up as an activist and organizer who evolved into a political strategist. Currently, Jotaka serves as the Head of Government Affairs at LendUp. She never would have imagined getting into tech but social impact tech was her driving force for finally joining the bandwagon. She then realized that tech people are not just a bunch of guys in white shirts, but like policy people, they are also dreamers and people who hustle to be transformative.

A Baltimore-native, Charles Pridgen majored in International Business and Finance, but realizing that he didn’t fit into the financial field he pursued a career in sales and eventually decided to break into startups. Charles previously worked at LivingSocial and Salesforce. He is currently working at a startup called Loggly, a cloud-based log management and search platform. Charles is also an organizer of the Black Professionals Network (BPN) where he seeks to build a community that fosters diversity through the power of networking and which has now grown into a massive success and a source of inspiration among people in the Bay Area.

Influenced by a strong Nigerian culture of excellence, education and faith, Ty moved from Arizona to San Francisco in search of that ONE opportunity that would push him every single day. Currently, Ty works on the Growth and Business Development team at Omni, an on-demand storage and delivery service. Often referred to by his friends as the 10X TY, Ty is a firm advocate of the Power of One where you should find that one thing & make damn sure you do it really, really well. Ty underlines the power of humility, being genuine, and leveraging relationships to help get you to where you want to be.

A Newport-native, Divine started dealing drugs at 13, got incarcerated at 18, and found himself not only locked up physically in federal prison, but also, in a psychological cycle of recidivism. Always knowing he was bound to be more than that, Divine tapped into his spirituality, fortitude, and his quick grasp of knowledge and turned his 7-year sentence into a self-development workshop. Along with some help from his mentor, Divine was finally able to break out of his destructive pattern going from incarceration to innovation. From crack to rap to tech, Divine currently provides financial literacy and entrepreneurship education to people through his new startup BLAK Fintech (where BLAK stands for Building Leverage Acquiring Knowledge).

Growing up in one of the poorest areas in Philadelphia, Rita Henderson broke a ton of barriers as a single mom proving to the society that she was more than just a statistic. Moving from North Philly to DC, Rita finally drove all the way to San Francisco in the hope of making things work for her family and carrying with her that burning passion of bringing change into the community. Rita is currently involved in the recruiting department at a startup company called Honor, an in-home senior care provider. Rita is the sister of Idalin Bobe who also came here on the show recently.

Growing up in one of the poorest zip codes in the U.S., Idalin wanted to bring change and put social justice in the forefront. From North Philly to Cali, Idalin wanted to break into tech so she could bring resources back to her neighborhood. Today, Idalin works as a Senior IT consultant at ThoughtWorks, which is known for having the toughest screening and interview process out of all tech companies. She is also part of ThoughtWork’s social justice team working as a tech activist where she is bringing computer education to the folks on the front lines fighting for justice and organize community-driven leaders around the world in efforts addressing the needs of black and brown people. Idalin has partnered with different organizations such as Black Girls Code, Qeyno Labs, and #YesWeCode in her aim of making an impact on the world through computer and security education.

Maurice is a 6'10" Richmond, California-native, legendary designer, and former professional basketball player who worked at several tech companies including Microsoft and Yahoo. He is the Founder of Inneract Project that helps youth and communities learn how to design. It was in getting involved with startup projects that really got him into the tech space because he was able to make mistakes, learn from them, correct them, and get even way better. (Shout out to Maurice’s mom for ushering him through his design journey.)